NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Time to think about family planning. You, your body, and … your employer?

Facebook made headlines when it first began comping employees for freezing their eggs, but now more companies are taking an active role in helping their workers plan and research their fertility.

Employers like Google and Apple offer full financial assistance for egg freezing. Spotify funds unlimited in-vitro fertilization. Patagonia offers childcare and family support services, opening the door for companies to take an active role in their employees’ children’s lives – from the (literal) very beginnings all the way through Pre-K and beyond.

According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), surrogacy refers to the arrangement where “a woman is artificially impregnated, whether for monetary compensation or not, with the intention that the child is to be the social child of some other person or couple”.

Commercial surrogacy often involves a fee paid to the surrogate mother. By hiring a surrogate mother, you are essentially hiring a woman to carry and deliver a child for you.

With more people facing fertility issues and couples increasingly seeking alternative routes to have children, there is a growing number of UK families created through surrogacy.

In the last three years, the number of children being born through surrogacy has almost tripled according to figures from the Ministry of Justice Family Court.

Surrogacy is no longer a taboo – along with adoption it has become an accepted alternative to traditional child birth. It has even recently featured in the Archers on Radio 4 and has been put into the headlines by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who have recently used a surrogate to have their baby, Chicago.

Same-sex couples who are considering gay surrogacy to conceive their families should examine the serious risks of unregulated programs overseas, said Bill Houghton, founder of the Sensible Surrogacy Guide.

As same-sex couples increasingly look for options to conceive children, many are choosing programs in countries without basic protections, according to Bill Houghton, founder of the Sensible Surrogacy Guide. Some destinations popular with gay couples have no specific legislation on surrogacy. This opens the door to unregulated programs with serious risks.

The last two decades have been revolutionary in terms of fertility management and triumphing challenges posed by infertility. To the couple experiencing difficulty in getting pregnant, there is plenty of hope today. It is not a lost battle like it was in the past. Besides, almost every hurdle can be overcome with the help of scientific and technologically advanced options. For example, a woman without a uterus can still have her own child by borrowing another’s womb! This makes experts believe that every woman how chooses to become pregnant can be blessed.

GENEVA (6 March 2018) – Children face becoming commodities as surrogacy arrangements become more prevalent, and urgent action is needed to protect their rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children has warned.

“There is no right to have a child under international law,” said Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, who presented a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. “Children are not goods or services that the State can guarantee or provide. They are human beings with rights.

The UK’s Department for Health and Social Care has released new guidelines advising that children born via surrogacy be told of their origins.

The guidelines, released last Wednesday, are intended to “ensure LGBTQ+ individuals are given equal care, and that all surrogates and intended parents are treated with due dignity and respect”. The document states:

Research suggests that openness, confidence and transparency about a child’s origins from an early age (pre-school) is the best way to talk to children about their identity and origins. Your fertility counsellor should have given you the opportunity to explore how you feel about telling a child about their origins, and fertility counsellors would be happy to help you reach a decision about this at any time, as your thoughts and feelings about if, when and how to do this may change over time.

Government guidance has been issued for couples considering surrogacy in England and Wales, for the first time.

Two sets of guidelines have been released, one for surrogates and intended parents, and the other for healthcare professionals working with them.

Couples planning to enter into an agreement with a surrogate are recommended to use written agreements covering conception, expenses and any planned relationship between the surrogate and the child. They are also encouraged to use established surrogacy organisations in the UK to find a surrogate, rather than travelling abroad to clinics or using informal arrangements.

Actress Sunny Leone on Monday surprised everyone by announcing the birth of her sons Noah and Asher via surrogacy.

She had adopted a girl, Nisha, in 2017.

Leone took to Twitter to post a picture of herself along with husband Daniel Weber and their three children.

Leone captioned it: “God’s plan! June 21st, 2017 was the day Daniel and I found out that we might possibly be having three children within a short amount of time. We planned and tried to have a family and after so many years [our] family is now complete with Asher Singh Weber, Noah Singh Weber and Nisha Kaur Weber.”

Priceless: Kristy and Craig Darken with baby Henry, born via a surrogate. Kristy described the process as akin to having all of the ingredients to make a cake, but baking it in someone else’s oven. Picture: Kelsey Mlekus Photography

BY the time Kristy and Craig Darken found out they were going to be parents, they had almost given up all hope of holding a child of their own in their arms.

It had been close to eight years of highs and lows, of hope and of devastation, as the Elermore Vale couple trod the testing track of having a baby via a surrogate.

But then, countless counselling sessions, IVF, two surrogates and 10 embryos later, a tearful late night phone call came from Kristy’s sister, Rebecca.

“She was crying her eyes out,” Kristy said.

“I thought she was crying because she knew it was our last try. I thought she was devastated. Then finally, she said, ‘I’m pregnant. It worked’.

More than 3,000 women travel abroad for cheap assisted human reproduction treatments every year, a leading fertility doctor has estimated.

Dr John Kennedy, medical director of Virtus Health, the largest provider of fertility services in Ireland, said the figure included those who travelled to get conventional IVF treatments, egg donation and surrogacy services.

He said it was difficult to get exact figures because some women travelled without informing their fertility doctors, but that 3,000 was a reasonable estimate. The average cost of a cycle of IVF in Ireland is between €5,000 and €7,000, but can cost less than €3,000 in some eastern European countries. Dr Kennedy said these countries were always going to be cheaper, but there could be differences in quality of care.

Sometimes I have the pleasure of telling you a story and sometimes the story just tells itself.

It’s safe to say a number of area lawmakers have had some tough days during the current legislative session in Olympia but the past 24 hours just might have been the toughest for Reps. Liz Pike (R — 18th District) and Vicki Kraft (R — 17th District) and others.

Pike, Kraft and their fellow lawmakers were on the floor of the house until after midnight in the a.m. hours of Wednesday. I spoke with Kraft by telephone this morning and I believe she told me that she was still testifying on the floor of the House of Representatives after midnight.

Parents are also warned not to enter into informal surrogacy arrangements but to use a surrogacy organisation to arrange the process, and advised not to go abroad but to use licensed clinics in the UK. CREDIT: DAVID JONES /PA

Children created through surrogacy should be told how they were born, the Government has said for the first time.

The first-ever official guidance for surrogacy arrangements says that “openness, confidence and transparency about a child’s origins from an early age (pre-school) is the best way to talk to children about their identity and origins”.

Parents are also warned not to enter into informal surrogacy arrangements but to use a surrogacy organisation to arrange the process, and advised not to go abroad but to use licensed clinics in the UK.